The single best piece of advice I received upon entering graduate studies was from an advanced student in my program: don't do all the reading. In undergrad, I read everything. Looking back, I'm not really sure how, but I definitely know I did it with a hardy sense of academic ethos and righteous integrity. I know this because when the advanced grad student informed me that the best thing I could do for myself would be to not do what I had always been doing, I immediate recoiled. What?! But won't they know?! I envisioned the professor's red laser beam eyes boring into mine cyborg-style, the statistics generated from my lying pupils revealing that I was a delinquent student.
As I started my graduate studies, however, I quickly realized I wouldn't be able to keep it up. Very often we are responsible for hundreds of pages (if not more) a week - it would be impossible to thoroughly read it all on top of outside research expectations, work duties, family and household obligations, and, you know, the necessary stuff like sleeping and eating and bathing once in a while. So I started to...well...not read all of it. And once I absolved myself of a sense of guilt and shame about that, my life began to be much more manageable.
You must be careful, of course. The advice is not to not read anything important, or to give up reading entirely. That would be the antithesis of good graduate work. You have to read. You simply must read something. If you don't love reading endlessly and writing endlessly about what read, you will not like graduate school, my friend; no, you will not like it at all. We are intent on being scholars, after all, so it's pretty much obligatory that you like the weight of book in your hand and the way your campus library smells (mmm! reading!!).
No, the point is that you must read strategically. You must learn to read as little as you need in order to have a thoughtful, reputable, coherent opinion on the matter, while also having a few moments to spare for grocery shopping. (Preparation for comprehensive exams is especially good for this. Your definition of 'reading' is increasingly liberal when you have an eight page, single-spaced list to knock out in a few weeks.)
And yet, there are times when you cannot get away with not reading everything. Classes that test you on points from the reading, for example (oh, the tricky way of getting undergrads to read!). Or classes that ask for intensive, reflective class discussions on the readings (oh, the tricky way of getting graduate students to read!). When you are expected to publicly blog about the readings, you certainly can't skim them.
But sometimes actually doing all of the readings means you trip up on issues that would have slipped seamlessly by you had you been blissfully avoiding them. If anything, doing all of the reading illuminates what you don't know. And I am not afraid to acquiesce when I am wrong or to admit I don't know what I am saying, as recently noted. I am not afraid to admit when I don't know what someone else is saying, either.
This week's readings dealt a double whammy in that respect. I was pretty excited by Wilson's (2004) title, "Gut Feminism." I had visions of a reappropriation of Bush's 'gut leadership,' where we could conceptualize a feminism that was instinctive and heartfelt. Shazam! Feminism from the gut! That sort of thing. It could probably make feminism a lot more approachable to people who are cooler than academics (which is most people, sorry), and might incline us to get out of our heads once in a while.
Turns out Wilson was actually being literal. As in, talking about the gut. "Gut Feminism," it seems, is about how we shouldn't overestimate how the body and the mind (psyche) work together, or underestimate the role of the bodily/biological in our theorizing. I think. Right? I really don't know. Maybe. I am also clueless as to what it has to do with standpoint theory, which is the topic of our other two readings.
But Michaelian's (2008) "Privileged Standpoints/Reliable Processes," is even worse. As I wormed my way through it, I kept stopping and asking myself, "wait, what did I just read?" I mean, let's start with the abstract of the corn. "Meta-epistomology"...okay, maybe. (Alright, I'll admit it - that's actually kinda cool. Standpoint theory is definitely meta.) But "process reliabilist first-order epistemology?" What the hell?! I realize Michaelian is trying to bridge theoretical strategies, but there has got to be a simpler way to say this. Can anyone offer a clarification?
I welcome any input from my classmates on what these readings are talking about. (That is, of course, if you do all the readings).
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Saturday, October 16, 2010
What The Princess and the Frog has to do with binary thinking
Disney fan or foe? It seems there are only two choices.
Last week I showed Mickey Mouse Monopoly to an undergraduate Race, Class, and Gender course. It was the first time I had seen it, too, and it was a rather shocking upheaval of all of my cherished childhood Disney movie favorites. Granted, I've long since recognized that the corporate behemoth that is Disney has not had dismantling binaries as its first priority. But it's been a long time since I've seen or thought about many of the films I loved as a child, and it's pretty horrifying to look back at them given what I know now. I mean, Ariel gave up her voice for legs and a dude! She was, quite literally, silenced by heterosexuality. And sure Belle was an avid bookworm who rejected Gaston's advances, but (as a social worker in Mickey Mouse Monopoly laid out) Beauty and the Beast is essentially a domestic violence narrative. Belle is able to see the 'tenderness' in the Beast after enduring starvation as punishment, numerous verbal assaults, and witnessing her father being dragged away and thrown out into the snow. (If you just hold out long enough through the abuse, girls, he'll be a prince in the end!) Mickey Mouse Monopoly goes on to document the racist depictions of Blacks (as crows and apes in The Jungle Book, as gorillas in Tarzan), Latinos (as chihuahuas in Oliver and Company), and Asians (as Siamese cats in The Lady and the Tramp).
Interestingly, the scholars depicted in the film stated that, in criticizing Disney, they ended up taking on a greater risk than they had expected. Disney is largely accepted and believed to be wholesome fun, and those who critique it are denounced for daring to suggest otherwise. To criticize Disney is to be branded the murderers of children's joy.
I've grown fairly distant from the Disney animated films (although I have seen most of the Pixar movies, which is pretty much the same thing), and I wondered if anything had changed in the nearly 10 years since Mickey Mouse Monopoly was released. I decided, hey, why not? I'm a glutton for punishment. So I watched The Princess and the Frog.
There has been considerably controversy surrounding The Princess and the Frog because it features Disney's first black princess. Disney notes (often and loudly) that went toatypical great lengths to not be racist misrepresent blacks. After complaints by various folks in the black community, Disney changed the title of the film from "The Frog Princess" to "The Princess and the Frog" to avoid making it sound like Tiana was frog-like. They also changed the lead character's name from "Maddy" (too close to "Mammy") to "Tiana." They axed Tiana's occupation as a maid and changed it to waitressing. The male romantic interest - Prince Naveen - was originally white, but it looks like they just tinted him to be Creole. Disney even took on Oprah Winfrey as a technical consultant to, well, to put it plainly, check in with a famous black person about some of their plot decisions.
Despite these changes, many unfortunate stereotypes and insinuations remain. These have been blogged about at length elsewhere, including the fact that Tiana spends more time (23 minutes versus 17 minutes) on screen as a frog than as a human and that the evil character is a Voodoo witch doctor (who looks suspiciously like Prince).
I would also add what I think are the most predominant problems in the film. The primary story arch is that Tiana wants to fulfill the shared wish of her and her (now deceased) father to open a restaurant. Tiana idolizes her father, and her mother (although living) is a background character. When she teaches Naveen to cook, marries him, and opens a restaurant with him, it looks creepily like she's filled the empty space left by her deceased father. She is a hard-working, industrious, independent, tireless young woman, and I don't know why she couldn't have the restaurant all by herself. Prince Naveen is spoiled and accustomed to having servants brush his teeth for him. Why does the first black princess typify the strong black woman caricature and end up with a lazy prince? She requires him to complete her story arch - that of a poor little (black) girl without a (black) father who will have male guidance once again when she marries a (light-skinned black) man.
The second major problem is even more insidious. As a little girl, her father told her that wishing on a star is not enough - it "can only take you part of the way." She must help her wish along "with some hard work of her own," and then she "can do anything you set your mind to." (Meritocracy lives!) She works her ass off to raise the funds to buy property for the restaurant, but must learn the lesson of the difference between what she wants and what she needs. What she "wants" (her own restaurant) is not enough without what she "needs" (heterosexual romance with Prince Naveen). I am not kidding. This is the take home message of this film. Then it ends with a song about how "dreams do come true in New Orleans."
For those of you with kids of your own these days, I have no idea what you show them.
The point in writing all of this is to say that, when reading the message boards in response to The Princess and the Frog, I saw they were packed with perfect examples of binary thinking (see Feminist Reverberations, Scott 2002). Those who criticize the film are Debbie-Downers and reverse-racists. Those who support it are racist bigots and apologists for Disney. Invectives lobbed from either party further cements factions. Clearly I shouldn't be expecting an open dialogue on internet message boards, but the ease with which someone who expresses frustration at the portrayal of blacks in the film is told they are being "so unfair" to Disney, who valiantly "took great pains to avoid being racially insensitive" is mind-blowing. Disney perpetuates this with its "with-us-or-against-us-plus-don't-forget-we-cleared-it-with-Oprah!" stance.
What I would add to Scott's critique of binary thinking is that, given the structures of privilege and oppression woven into all examples of binary thinking, one 'side' generally has more power and force than another. (In her example of Palestine and Israel, we can all say quite certainly which 'side' is a less dangerous one to take in the United States). In the case of The Princess and the Frog, it's very easy - and accepted - to claim that black people are being reverse-racists when they barely open their mouths to mention that they are being inaccurately and dangerously portrayed. (A great blog entry about this power differential and why the black critique of the film matters can be found here). As in the case of the scholars behind Mickey Mouse Monopoly, you can't do much critiquing when you are up against a global industry that has, more or less, dominated children's imaginations and sense of play for nearly a century.
To critique something doesn't mean you hate it (well, at least most of the time). It does mean you want to change it. When we encounter binary thinking, perhaps it would serve us well to think about what it is each side wants to have changed. In the case of Disney, the answer is not very much.
And that should be all the answer we need.
Last week I showed Mickey Mouse Monopoly to an undergraduate Race, Class, and Gender course. It was the first time I had seen it, too, and it was a rather shocking upheaval of all of my cherished childhood Disney movie favorites. Granted, I've long since recognized that the corporate behemoth that is Disney has not had dismantling binaries as its first priority. But it's been a long time since I've seen or thought about many of the films I loved as a child, and it's pretty horrifying to look back at them given what I know now. I mean, Ariel gave up her voice for legs and a dude! She was, quite literally, silenced by heterosexuality. And sure Belle was an avid bookworm who rejected Gaston's advances, but (as a social worker in Mickey Mouse Monopoly laid out) Beauty and the Beast is essentially a domestic violence narrative. Belle is able to see the 'tenderness' in the Beast after enduring starvation as punishment, numerous verbal assaults, and witnessing her father being dragged away and thrown out into the snow. (If you just hold out long enough through the abuse, girls, he'll be a prince in the end!) Mickey Mouse Monopoly goes on to document the racist depictions of Blacks (as crows and apes in The Jungle Book, as gorillas in Tarzan), Latinos (as chihuahuas in Oliver and Company), and Asians (as Siamese cats in The Lady and the Tramp).
Interestingly, the scholars depicted in the film stated that, in criticizing Disney, they ended up taking on a greater risk than they had expected. Disney is largely accepted and believed to be wholesome fun, and those who critique it are denounced for daring to suggest otherwise. To criticize Disney is to be branded the murderers of children's joy.
I've grown fairly distant from the Disney animated films (although I have seen most of the Pixar movies, which is pretty much the same thing), and I wondered if anything had changed in the nearly 10 years since Mickey Mouse Monopoly was released. I decided, hey, why not? I'm a glutton for punishment. So I watched The Princess and the Frog.
There has been considerably controversy surrounding The Princess and the Frog because it features Disney's first black princess. Disney notes (often and loudly) that went to
Despite these changes, many unfortunate stereotypes and insinuations remain. These have been blogged about at length elsewhere, including the fact that Tiana spends more time (23 minutes versus 17 minutes) on screen as a frog than as a human and that the evil character is a Voodoo witch doctor (who looks suspiciously like Prince).
I would also add what I think are the most predominant problems in the film. The primary story arch is that Tiana wants to fulfill the shared wish of her and her (now deceased) father to open a restaurant. Tiana idolizes her father, and her mother (although living) is a background character. When she teaches Naveen to cook, marries him, and opens a restaurant with him, it looks creepily like she's filled the empty space left by her deceased father. She is a hard-working, industrious, independent, tireless young woman, and I don't know why she couldn't have the restaurant all by herself. Prince Naveen is spoiled and accustomed to having servants brush his teeth for him. Why does the first black princess typify the strong black woman caricature and end up with a lazy prince? She requires him to complete her story arch - that of a poor little (black) girl without a (black) father who will have male guidance once again when she marries a (light-skinned black) man.
The second major problem is even more insidious. As a little girl, her father told her that wishing on a star is not enough - it "can only take you part of the way." She must help her wish along "with some hard work of her own," and then she "can do anything you set your mind to." (Meritocracy lives!) She works her ass off to raise the funds to buy property for the restaurant, but must learn the lesson of the difference between what she wants and what she needs. What she "wants" (her own restaurant) is not enough without what she "needs" (heterosexual romance with Prince Naveen). I am not kidding. This is the take home message of this film. Then it ends with a song about how "dreams do come true in New Orleans."
For those of you with kids of your own these days, I have no idea what you show them.
The point in writing all of this is to say that, when reading the message boards in response to The Princess and the Frog, I saw they were packed with perfect examples of binary thinking (see Feminist Reverberations, Scott 2002). Those who criticize the film are Debbie-Downers and reverse-racists. Those who support it are racist bigots and apologists for Disney. Invectives lobbed from either party further cements factions. Clearly I shouldn't be expecting an open dialogue on internet message boards, but the ease with which someone who expresses frustration at the portrayal of blacks in the film is told they are being "so unfair" to Disney, who valiantly "took great pains to avoid being racially insensitive" is mind-blowing. Disney perpetuates this with its "with-us-or-against-us-plus-don't-forget-we-cleared-it-with-Oprah!" stance.
What I would add to Scott's critique of binary thinking is that, given the structures of privilege and oppression woven into all examples of binary thinking, one 'side' generally has more power and force than another. (In her example of Palestine and Israel, we can all say quite certainly which 'side' is a less dangerous one to take in the United States). In the case of The Princess and the Frog, it's very easy - and accepted - to claim that black people are being reverse-racists when they barely open their mouths to mention that they are being inaccurately and dangerously portrayed. (A great blog entry about this power differential and why the black critique of the film matters can be found here). As in the case of the scholars behind Mickey Mouse Monopoly, you can't do much critiquing when you are up against a global industry that has, more or less, dominated children's imaginations and sense of play for nearly a century.
To critique something doesn't mean you hate it (well, at least most of the time). It does mean you want to change it. When we encounter binary thinking, perhaps it would serve us well to think about what it is each side wants to have changed. In the case of Disney, the answer is not very much.
And that should be all the answer we need.
Friday, October 15, 2010
A confession (also, Harry Potter!)
I first heard (or noticed) the word "discourse" my senior year of undergrad in a graduate level Literary Theory course. It was a terrible class, and I had no business being there. I was far too much of an activist to sit around 'deconstructing texts' and be told week after week that our words are merely utterances that hinge on no reality. Every time my cold, aloof professor uttered "discourse" or "discursive," he didn't seem to hinge on any reality, either. To be honest, I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.
It's been several years since that horrible class, and I have moved into the social sciences where 'discourse' is used only slightly differently than the humanities. But my growing familiarity with academic lingo means I have heard "discourse" used thousands of times since then and, out of context clues or just habitual use, am more comfortable with coexisting with it. Once in a while I even catch myself using it, and I see people nodding their heads, so I must have caught on sometime ago.
Here is my confession: I'm still not convinced I know what "discourse" means, or why the hell we use it. (My cordial apologies to Foucault). I realize this is a dangerous confession. Years from now, someone will find this blog, send it to the news outlets, and the Chronicle of Higher Education will trot out a story about how "academic admits to being an ignoramous!," and any semblance of an academic career I might have will be destroyed.
I am only half joking.
I do believe that "discourse" is one of those words academics all pretend they understand when they really don't, as indicated by Bacchi's (2005) "Discourse, Discourse Everywhere." In this article, Bacchi notes the many scholars who mistake discourse theory for framework theory, or conflate discourse use with being constituted through discourse, or who use discourse indiscriminately to refer to wide and varying phenomena. I've probably done all three. I'm not saying "discourse" isn't an awesome idea (if it is what I think it is), but that I'm just gonna go ahead and say I am not interested in being one of the academics who pretends she understands what it really means anymore.
The irony of me suggesting that discourse "really means" something is not lost on me. The irony that the attempt to secure a "'correct' definition of discourse" is an inevitable failure because "the whole idea of discourse is that definitions play an important part in delineating knowledge" is not lost on me, either. Leave it to an academic to come up with a term that resists definition.
The elusiveness of the word is perhaps one of the reasons I literally cannot fully grasp it. It also is a word that smacks of the jargonese that makes some folks feel like theory is not their domain. I am further suspicious of "discourse" because, in my experience, it leads to us spending a whole lot of time talking about agency, and very little talking about power. Or if we do talk about power, we end up talking about agency in response to power. Either way, discourse is like the horcruxes of Voldemort...they are everywhere, but you don't know exactly where they are or what they look like until they start to burn a hole in your skin or erupt from an old woman's body. And then you have to go out and find all of them but really you're just like, arghh, I just want to kill Voldemort already! But the horcruxes are Voldemort, see? Just as he's a horcrux user, he's also, like, totally constituted by the horcruxes.
I realize I just made an extended Harry Potter metaphor. That hypothetical Chronicle of Ed story keeps getting better and better!
All of this is to say that I agree with Bacchi's conclusions in favor of "reflexive framing," and "discourse" will still pop out of my mouth from time to time, and will likely also make it into my dissertation as an obligatory reference. There may be a time when I look back at this post with shame and embarrassment for ever suggesting that I didn't know what I was talking about.
And that's just the point - perhaps we should examine not only how we use discourse indiscriminately, but why we do. We should always be intentional about the jargon we chose to privilege, and for a moment, let's entertain the possibility that "discourse" may have achieved hegemony within academic work. And if anyone would like to deconstruct that, I say have at it.
It's been several years since that horrible class, and I have moved into the social sciences where 'discourse' is used only slightly differently than the humanities. But my growing familiarity with academic lingo means I have heard "discourse" used thousands of times since then and, out of context clues or just habitual use, am more comfortable with coexisting with it. Once in a while I even catch myself using it, and I see people nodding their heads, so I must have caught on sometime ago.
Here is my confession: I'm still not convinced I know what "discourse" means, or why the hell we use it. (My cordial apologies to Foucault). I realize this is a dangerous confession. Years from now, someone will find this blog, send it to the news outlets, and the Chronicle of Higher Education will trot out a story about how "academic admits to being an ignoramous!," and any semblance of an academic career I might have will be destroyed.
I am only half joking.
I do believe that "discourse" is one of those words academics all pretend they understand when they really don't, as indicated by Bacchi's (2005) "Discourse, Discourse Everywhere." In this article, Bacchi notes the many scholars who mistake discourse theory for framework theory, or conflate discourse use with being constituted through discourse, or who use discourse indiscriminately to refer to wide and varying phenomena. I've probably done all three. I'm not saying "discourse" isn't an awesome idea (if it is what I think it is), but that I'm just gonna go ahead and say I am not interested in being one of the academics who pretends she understands what it really means anymore.
The irony of me suggesting that discourse "really means" something is not lost on me. The irony that the attempt to secure a "'correct' definition of discourse" is an inevitable failure because "the whole idea of discourse is that definitions play an important part in delineating knowledge" is not lost on me, either. Leave it to an academic to come up with a term that resists definition.
The elusiveness of the word is perhaps one of the reasons I literally cannot fully grasp it. It also is a word that smacks of the jargonese that makes some folks feel like theory is not their domain. I am further suspicious of "discourse" because, in my experience, it leads to us spending a whole lot of time talking about agency, and very little talking about power. Or if we do talk about power, we end up talking about agency in response to power. Either way, discourse is like the horcruxes of Voldemort...they are everywhere, but you don't know exactly where they are or what they look like until they start to burn a hole in your skin or erupt from an old woman's body. And then you have to go out and find all of them but really you're just like, arghh, I just want to kill Voldemort already! But the horcruxes are Voldemort, see? Just as he's a horcrux user, he's also, like, totally constituted by the horcruxes.
I realize I just made an extended Harry Potter metaphor. That hypothetical Chronicle of Ed story keeps getting better and better!
All of this is to say that I agree with Bacchi's conclusions in favor of "reflexive framing," and "discourse" will still pop out of my mouth from time to time, and will likely also make it into my dissertation as an obligatory reference. There may be a time when I look back at this post with shame and embarrassment for ever suggesting that I didn't know what I was talking about.
And that's just the point - perhaps we should examine not only how we use discourse indiscriminately, but why we do. We should always be intentional about the jargon we chose to privilege, and for a moment, let's entertain the possibility that "discourse" may have achieved hegemony within academic work. And if anyone would like to deconstruct that, I say have at it.
Theory is for everyone!
This past week, in my Race Theory and Social Thought class, a black woman in her first year of an Africana Studies masters program announced to the class and our professor that she doesn't like theory. "I'm not interested in all of that," she said, gesturing to the air above her. "I'm not good at that theoretical stuff. I don't get it. I mean, it's fine and all, but I just don't do theory. I'm interested in the practical, what's real." She pounded on her desk, indicating that the desk was real and theory merely abstract particles.
The professor (a black man) responded by pointing out the importance of theory for critical thinking. We don't have to enjoy critical thinking - sometimes we don't like something, he seemed to indicate, because it can be difficult or uncomfortable.
While perfectly valid, his response was not addressing the fundamental misconception in the student's expression. She was making the mistake of assuming theory to be intrinsically dense and unwieldy, yes. She was making the mistake of assuming theory to be entirely divorced from reality, double yes. But the most critical mistaken assumption she made was to believe that she herself was not already a theorist.
I know that there is often knee-jerk resistance to that idea - that we are, each of us, theorists. This is for good reason, largely because the academy has done an admirable job convincing non-academics that they are not theorists. Theory is deemed the domain of the professional intellectual, and this is no accident. The academy has created a cannon of literature, stamped "theory" on it, and wiped its hands of the matter. (Not an academic? Oh, that's too bad! If you're lucky, maybe someone will do you the great honor of dropping by and translating your petty common ideas into golden nuggets of theoretical wisdom one day!)
In positing itself as an interpreter (or, more likely, reinterpreter, or, better yet, re-writer) of The Other, the academy has managed quite the colonialist wake of stolen knowledge. Given its history, it's no wonder some students, especially those who do not look or sound like what we have conceptualized as a "theorist," would distance themselves from theory. Black women are especially susceptible to such a distancing, regardless of black feminist inroads into the academy (as detailed by Griffin 2005). "The fights over canons and curricula were in fact struggles for power," Griffin notes, but just because "the academy [has become] yet another location, another site in the centuries-long battle against white supremacy and patriarchy," doesn't mean that that battle site is a winning one. It sure doesn't seem so to students like the one from my Race Theory class.
Further more, academics are complicit in misinterpreting such theoretical foundations. Griffen chronicles the many theorists (even scholars of color) who have accused black feminist writings for being "more practical than theoretical" and having a "debilitating reliance on experience." Where is such a student as the one in my Race Theory class supposed to find herself among such divisive bickering? The arguments lobbed at early black feminist writings as 'essentializing race' miss the point entirely - race and gender are experienced as essential identities when you are treated as if these categories are essential to you. The student in my class understood theory to be what rejoinders to black feminist thought have suggested, not black feminist thought itself. Theory is experiential. To say otherwise is self-delusion, if not self denial.
As educators, we are responsible for healing this gap. We must guide students into seeing the way they (much to their dismay!) have been preaching theory all along - that their theories are the foundation for not only their lives, but the lives of others. On the opening page of Weaving a Family, Rothman writes, "It would be a mistake to read academic language and think it is devoid of values, feelings, or experience. It is no less a mistake to read the vernacular and think it is devoid of theory and research." Many theorists (their mothers, for example) may not sound like they imagine or have been told a theorist should sound. The theorists they are most likely to be exposed to and told are authentic theorists really do seem distant from their lived realities, even if they aren't (coughMarxcough). When a student tells us she just "doesn't do" theory, we must, must, must tell her that she already is.
"Theory" may also be a bad name for a cool idea. When we say we have a theory outside of academia, we usually mean we have an idea, a hunch, a thought. "Theory" in the academic sense is so much more than a hunch. Theory is about articulating our truths, verbalizing our material conditions and lived realities, spitting hot flames to ignite a darkened room. The words you speak is the theory you live.
Theory is for everyone, if only because theory is by everyone.
The professor (a black man) responded by pointing out the importance of theory for critical thinking. We don't have to enjoy critical thinking - sometimes we don't like something, he seemed to indicate, because it can be difficult or uncomfortable.
While perfectly valid, his response was not addressing the fundamental misconception in the student's expression. She was making the mistake of assuming theory to be intrinsically dense and unwieldy, yes. She was making the mistake of assuming theory to be entirely divorced from reality, double yes. But the most critical mistaken assumption she made was to believe that she herself was not already a theorist.
I know that there is often knee-jerk resistance to that idea - that we are, each of us, theorists. This is for good reason, largely because the academy has done an admirable job convincing non-academics that they are not theorists. Theory is deemed the domain of the professional intellectual, and this is no accident. The academy has created a cannon of literature, stamped "theory" on it, and wiped its hands of the matter. (Not an academic? Oh, that's too bad! If you're lucky, maybe someone will do you the great honor of dropping by and translating your petty common ideas into golden nuggets of theoretical wisdom one day!)
In positing itself as an interpreter (or, more likely, reinterpreter, or, better yet, re-writer) of The Other, the academy has managed quite the colonialist wake of stolen knowledge. Given its history, it's no wonder some students, especially those who do not look or sound like what we have conceptualized as a "theorist," would distance themselves from theory. Black women are especially susceptible to such a distancing, regardless of black feminist inroads into the academy (as detailed by Griffin 2005). "The fights over canons and curricula were in fact struggles for power," Griffin notes, but just because "the academy [has become] yet another location, another site in the centuries-long battle against white supremacy and patriarchy," doesn't mean that that battle site is a winning one. It sure doesn't seem so to students like the one from my Race Theory class.
Further more, academics are complicit in misinterpreting such theoretical foundations. Griffen chronicles the many theorists (even scholars of color) who have accused black feminist writings for being "more practical than theoretical" and having a "debilitating reliance on experience." Where is such a student as the one in my Race Theory class supposed to find herself among such divisive bickering? The arguments lobbed at early black feminist writings as 'essentializing race' miss the point entirely - race and gender are experienced as essential identities when you are treated as if these categories are essential to you. The student in my class understood theory to be what rejoinders to black feminist thought have suggested, not black feminist thought itself. Theory is experiential. To say otherwise is self-delusion, if not self denial.
As educators, we are responsible for healing this gap. We must guide students into seeing the way they (much to their dismay!) have been preaching theory all along - that their theories are the foundation for not only their lives, but the lives of others. On the opening page of Weaving a Family, Rothman writes, "It would be a mistake to read academic language and think it is devoid of values, feelings, or experience. It is no less a mistake to read the vernacular and think it is devoid of theory and research." Many theorists (their mothers, for example) may not sound like they imagine or have been told a theorist should sound. The theorists they are most likely to be exposed to and told are authentic theorists really do seem distant from their lived realities, even if they aren't (coughMarxcough). When a student tells us she just "doesn't do" theory, we must, must, must tell her that she already is.
"Theory" may also be a bad name for a cool idea. When we say we have a theory outside of academia, we usually mean we have an idea, a hunch, a thought. "Theory" in the academic sense is so much more than a hunch. Theory is about articulating our truths, verbalizing our material conditions and lived realities, spitting hot flames to ignite a darkened room. The words you speak is the theory you live.
Theory is for everyone, if only because theory is by everyone.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
All together, now, can we all say "activist?"
Last week, Professor Greg Squires visited our campus to give a lecture on his new book, There Is No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster: Race, Class, and Hurricane Katrina. Now based at George Washington University, he was decked out in his D.C. attire - navy blazer, powder blue collared shirt, no tie. Before his departmental lecture, he met with interested graduate students to offer advice on how to best address public issues in our academic work. It quickly became clear that he is one of those guys who looks like the embodiment of upper middle class, white hegemonic masculinity, but is really, on the inside, is not. It's like "white bread D.C." is his Halloween costume, if you will. That's not to say that he doesn't endorse academia, but that he didn't see why we couldn't all do work that promoted justice within the academic realm. He promoted the idea of "doing good and doing well," which translates to doing "good" things for those outside of academia while doing "well" professionally (writing awesome papers, publishing in awesome journals, getting awesome contracts with awesome editors...you know, just being all around academically awesome). Squires told us we must work to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable," all the while "advance an agenda worth advancing."
After his brief monologue encouraging us to comfort and afflict, the table opened for student questions. I asked him how he was able to balance being an activist scholar with the institutional pressures that may make it difficult to do activist work.
Oops.
All his talk of changey hopey stuff doped me up, and I forgot a cardinal rule of disciplinary academia: never say 'activist.' Because no one is an activist. They might "disrupt" or "destabilize," they might "challenge" or "counter," they might even do "good" or do "justice," but they never, ever, ever are "activists."
He immediately went into back-tracking mode. We can't be viewed as activists, he told me. Being perceived as an activist undermines our ability to do 'good' work. There is a danger of being seen as too much of an activist, which is that no one will publish you and your work is discounted in and outside of your discipline. He then told a story about being in a court case where the bad guys were demanding that he say he was an activist scholar to the court, but then he turned the tables on them by saying what he had just said to me - that he can't be an activist because then he wouldn't be able to act in his own self-interest (by that he meant publishing in the best journals), and that the only activist in the room was them (the bad guys) because their activism blinded their view to other perspectives.
In many ways, I understand. Squires, like any professor, can't afford to be perceived as an activist - "activist" has a taint of agenda-pushing (as if that's a bad thing) that shuts doors and closes ears. But activism doesn't seem quite what he made it out to be. Sudbury and Okazawa-Rey define "activist scholarship" as "the production of knowledge and pedagogical practices through active engagements with, and in the service of, progressive social movements." That sounds fair enough. No 'blinding' or journal shunning there. But I know it's not necessarily what people presume of you when you identify as an 'activist' - instead, it's all the things Squires said in his answer, and for that reason Squires does not.
I can't help thinking though, that there can't be anything that wrong with saying we are 'activists.' If anything, I wonder what we lose by not saying we are activists. It means it stays that bad thing no one wants to say they are, even though everyone's secretly (or not so secretly) doing it. For Squires to distance himself from it speaks to the marginalization of the word, because surely Squires in the most comfortable place of all of us to claim "activist." As my partner said to me upon hearing this story about Professor Squires, "If he can't say he's an activist, who can?"
Then I realized...maybe only someone like Squires (white, upper middle class, totally hegemonic, I mean let's be real here) can be like Squires. He had said he didn't see why we couldn't all do work that promoted justice within academia, but really we can't all do justice work so easily within the academy. First of all, some folks don't make it to academia...either academia has never been a place for them to find justice or academia has never been a possibility. Second, some of those that do don't stay because they quickly realize they are not welcomed or don't fit the ideal type of an academic (who looks and talks a lot like Squires). And third, some of those who stay aren't able to do justice work as easily as Squire suggests. They are perceived as agenda driven because they are not white, or not male, or not straight, or not middle class...they are branded activists because they are 'the other' and dare to theorize on their otherness. They cannot so easily do good and do well. For some of us, doing good means we will never do 'well,' at least not in the eyes of the 'best' journals and editors. Squires can do this work and it can be "good" and published in the best journals...and he can still safely assure us he is not an activist, if only because he is presumed to have no stake in the matter.
But we all have stake, don't we? Indeed, that what leads, each of us, no matter our positionality, to...act. While I agree we desperately need more Squires in academia, people who fit the academic mold and yet are willing to promote social justice in their work, we must also broaden our idea of what "doing good" and "doing well" mean, and who has greater access to either of them.
After his brief monologue encouraging us to comfort and afflict, the table opened for student questions. I asked him how he was able to balance being an activist scholar with the institutional pressures that may make it difficult to do activist work.
Oops.
All his talk of changey hopey stuff doped me up, and I forgot a cardinal rule of disciplinary academia: never say 'activist.' Because no one is an activist. They might "disrupt" or "destabilize," they might "challenge" or "counter," they might even do "good" or do "justice," but they never, ever, ever are "activists."
He immediately went into back-tracking mode. We can't be viewed as activists, he told me. Being perceived as an activist undermines our ability to do 'good' work. There is a danger of being seen as too much of an activist, which is that no one will publish you and your work is discounted in and outside of your discipline. He then told a story about being in a court case where the bad guys were demanding that he say he was an activist scholar to the court, but then he turned the tables on them by saying what he had just said to me - that he can't be an activist because then he wouldn't be able to act in his own self-interest (by that he meant publishing in the best journals), and that the only activist in the room was them (the bad guys) because their activism blinded their view to other perspectives.
In many ways, I understand. Squires, like any professor, can't afford to be perceived as an activist - "activist" has a taint of agenda-pushing (as if that's a bad thing) that shuts doors and closes ears. But activism doesn't seem quite what he made it out to be. Sudbury and Okazawa-Rey define "activist scholarship" as "the production of knowledge and pedagogical practices through active engagements with, and in the service of, progressive social movements." That sounds fair enough. No 'blinding' or journal shunning there. But I know it's not necessarily what people presume of you when you identify as an 'activist' - instead, it's all the things Squires said in his answer, and for that reason Squires does not.
I can't help thinking though, that there can't be anything that wrong with saying we are 'activists.' If anything, I wonder what we lose by not saying we are activists. It means it stays that bad thing no one wants to say they are, even though everyone's secretly (or not so secretly) doing it. For Squires to distance himself from it speaks to the marginalization of the word, because surely Squires in the most comfortable place of all of us to claim "activist." As my partner said to me upon hearing this story about Professor Squires, "If he can't say he's an activist, who can?"
Then I realized...maybe only someone like Squires (white, upper middle class, totally hegemonic, I mean let's be real here) can be like Squires. He had said he didn't see why we couldn't all do work that promoted justice within academia, but really we can't all do justice work so easily within the academy. First of all, some folks don't make it to academia...either academia has never been a place for them to find justice or academia has never been a possibility. Second, some of those that do don't stay because they quickly realize they are not welcomed or don't fit the ideal type of an academic (who looks and talks a lot like Squires). And third, some of those who stay aren't able to do justice work as easily as Squire suggests. They are perceived as agenda driven because they are not white, or not male, or not straight, or not middle class...they are branded activists because they are 'the other' and dare to theorize on their otherness. They cannot so easily do good and do well. For some of us, doing good means we will never do 'well,' at least not in the eyes of the 'best' journals and editors. Squires can do this work and it can be "good" and published in the best journals...and he can still safely assure us he is not an activist, if only because he is presumed to have no stake in the matter.
But we all have stake, don't we? Indeed, that what leads, each of us, no matter our positionality, to...act. While I agree we desperately need more Squires in academia, people who fit the academic mold and yet are willing to promote social justice in their work, we must also broaden our idea of what "doing good" and "doing well" mean, and who has greater access to either of them.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Mistaking friendliness for friendship
In "Friendship, Friendliness, and Feminist Fieldwork," Kirsch describes the problems that arise when, through developing the rapport necessary for interviews and ethnographies, participants "mistake a good interview fora therapeutic situation." Feminist scholarship has encouraged rapport and minimizing the distance between researcher and the researched, but Kirsh warns that such a pendulum can swing too far. Our participants can sometimes forget or repress the understanding of an interview space and divulge information they may later wish they hadn't, or may also feel a sudden sense of betrayal or anger and wish to shut down an interview for being too personal, even if they had been answering more personal questions all along. Researchers, too, can be duplicitous (even if unintentional) by establishing rapport only to up and leave when the information is collected.
Kirsch reminds us that it is our responsibility as researchers to be extremely cautious about what we are promising when we build rapport, because "friendliness" can be easily mistaken for "friendship." Our scholarship is almost always not founded on long term relationships, but rather "simulate the context of relationships" where "the flow of information is one-sided." In order to resolve the potential disregard for the emotional effects participants may experience, Kirsch suggests that we ask for consent again at the end of an interview, allow for our participants to set boundaries, and "respect - and expect - participants' silence, distance, and withdrawal." Rather than see consent as something static and one-timed, we should conceive of consent as ever renegotiable. Rather than see all of our participants as people we should 'like' and enjoy being around, we should always remember that "our interactions with participants are most often based on friendliness, not genuine friendship."
What struck me most about this article was it suggested about the lack of genuine friendships we collectively seem to have. What passes for friendship in our lives is often rather surface and superfluous...we have mistaken friendliness for friendship with 'friends' who aren't researchers, too. We are so hungry for authentic relationships that when a researcher comes along with a long list of questions about us and all the time in the world to listen to us answer them uninterrupted, we think we're BFFs. Establishing greater boundaries between 'friendliness' and 'friendship' is not only not only necessary for more ethical and honest research, but it is necessary for sustaining deeper, more lasting friendships in our everyday lives. We should all have people surrounding us who offer us the "undivided attention, sincere interest, and warmth" afforded by an ethnographer, but without actually dashing off to write up a study picking apart what we just said. While I agree with Kirsh that such boundaries are crucial to our research, I also wonder if this also means many of us just need better friends, or - more importantly - need to be better friends.
Kirsch reminds us that it is our responsibility as researchers to be extremely cautious about what we are promising when we build rapport, because "friendliness" can be easily mistaken for "friendship." Our scholarship is almost always not founded on long term relationships, but rather "simulate the context of relationships" where "the flow of information is one-sided." In order to resolve the potential disregard for the emotional effects participants may experience, Kirsch suggests that we ask for consent again at the end of an interview, allow for our participants to set boundaries, and "respect - and expect - participants' silence, distance, and withdrawal." Rather than see consent as something static and one-timed, we should conceive of consent as ever renegotiable. Rather than see all of our participants as people we should 'like' and enjoy being around, we should always remember that "our interactions with participants are most often based on friendliness, not genuine friendship."
What struck me most about this article was it suggested about the lack of genuine friendships we collectively seem to have. What passes for friendship in our lives is often rather surface and superfluous...we have mistaken friendliness for friendship with 'friends' who aren't researchers, too. We are so hungry for authentic relationships that when a researcher comes along with a long list of questions about us and all the time in the world to listen to us answer them uninterrupted, we think we're BFFs. Establishing greater boundaries between 'friendliness' and 'friendship' is not only not only necessary for more ethical and honest research, but it is necessary for sustaining deeper, more lasting friendships in our everyday lives. We should all have people surrounding us who offer us the "undivided attention, sincere interest, and warmth" afforded by an ethnographer, but without actually dashing off to write up a study picking apart what we just said. While I agree with Kirsh that such boundaries are crucial to our research, I also wonder if this also means many of us just need better friends, or - more importantly - need to be better friends.
Our bodies cannot be contained
A good friend of mine went to her annual physical last spring. When she was weighed, it was evident that she had lost nearly 10 pounds since her last visit the year before. My friend is petite and sinewy, and had always had slender build as long as I have known her. She has also always been a generally healthy eater, opting for veggie options over red meat and consuming smaller portions because she doesn't like feeling 'full' or getting that heavy, stuffed sensation after eating a large meal. Instead, she grazes throughout the day whenever she feels hungry. Most notably, as far as I know, she has never passed up dessert. (I have seen this woman not buy a $10 t-shirt that will stay in her wardrobe for years because it is "too much money" and then plunk down $8 on a piece of specialty cake and gleefully savor it for the ten minutes it's on her plate.)
In the past year, however, she had taken up regular walking, occasional jogging, and hip-hop and belly dancing classes. She had also been working longer hours, and was perhaps experiencing more stress than the year before. Whatever the reason, dropping ten pounds meant something different for her than many people - she was now nearly 100 pounds. And, according to where her weight and height fit in a standardized chart the doctor referred to, my friend was a disordered eater. The doctor's tone was was stern and accusing. "You have a problem," the doctor (a woman) said. "You need to get help."
My friend talks about this experience with a considerable sense of trauma. No matter her protests to the contrary, the doctor was certain she had "a problem." My friend did not know herself to have an eating disorder, as she has never starved herself or thrown up food she has consumed. She doesn't have any preoccupations about being fat, and has never asked me anything along the lines of "do I look big in this?" or "does my stomach bulge in this shirt?" But her statistics were speaking for her, and the doctor chose to believe those instead of her proclamations.
"What could I do?" she said to me when she relayed this story. "I fit the profile." She is white, middle class, and a young woman in her early 20s. These are the people we think of when we hear "eating disorder," and they are the people who are usually treated for such a disorder, even though eating disorders are not inherently white or middle-class issues. The doctor presumed she must have been in denial about her disorder. Likely she has been lied to before. I wonder, also, whether the doctor has leveled other wrongful accusations in the past...perhaps she feels as though she can't afford not to.
So my friend was assigned to a nutritionist, who prescribed larger portion sizes as the antidote to her weight loss. Within a few months, most of the weight had returned. Overall, she has been glad to have had the opportunity to see a nutritionist, something many of us would likely benefit from, but still feels pained by the experience with her doctor, to the point of not knowing if she will return to her practice. She was embarrassed about returning to a doctor who was certain she "needed help" and facing someone who was convinced that she had "a problem," but she was also wary of trusting of a doctor who did not listen or respect her self-narrative. Sometimes we need a doctor to doubt us, to read between the lines, in order to help us. But what happens when need a doctor to believe what we are saying is true? Or at least, for the sake of our dignity, treat us as if we are the experts of our own lives?
I share this because we cannot forget that to standardize something does not mean we have accounted for every possibility of the human experience. We are far more diverse and varied than any standardized system can accommodate. This is especially poignant considering the interpretations of "disordered eating." Authority intervention, as Hatse and Honey (2005) indicate, is often predicated on a subjective idea of what "normal" eating is. To be diagnosed as having an eating disorder is not always the same as actually having disordered eating, as my friend experienced firsthand.
In their study of anorexia, Hatse and Honey face the difficulty of setting a sampling frame given the standards of objectivity forced upon subjective opinions and experiences. They note that "diagnoses [of anorexia] were often inconsistent and changeable," and subject to revision at the doctors' will. "To brand a girl anorexic without consent was to deny her selfhood," Hatse and Honey write, but they were not able to accommodate for the "complex spectrum" of disordered eating experiences because of the institutional pressures of doctors and the ethics board.
As one ethics officer says, rather shockingly, "The girls are anorexic. The fact that some girls don't agree with their diagnosis doesn't mean they're not anorexic." Hatse and Honey later explain how ethic committees, like medical science, "grew out of a positivist tradition," where a "universal, rational subject" is presumed. To trust the diagnoses implicitly was to "privilege clinical diagnoses over girls' views," but was a necessary precondition for achieving access to doctors' patients under standardized ethical circumstances.
In defining their research population, Hatse and Honey face a paradox - once defined, they "erased the particular and individual differences among potential participants," thereby missing a core tenet of research ethics: "respect for persons." Although Hatse and Honey push for greater collaboration with both the ethics board and the doctors, they argue that a more collaborative approach should be possible and a greater eye for diversity should be accommodated by medical and ethical practices. Unlike many other researchers, Hatse and Honey do not view the ethics board as an impediment to their study, but a means of ensuring a necessary protection of their studied population. The problem is when the necessary steps to getting the ethics board's stamp of approval means sacrificing a more holistic, humane, and authentically ethical treatment of their participants.
As researchers, we must navigate bureaucratic and positivist standards when we know they will limit our ability to account for variable experiences. No doubt, such standards are forced to reconcile their failure to say much about anything when faced with outliers who are really a lot like everybody else, in that they are not at all like anyone else. Because when we set limits and standards and ranges, we constantly find that humanity leaks through the cracks. Our bodies simply cannot be contained. Our charge as researchers is not to recapture them and squish them back inside, but to witness, document, and account for their liberation, thereby, perhaps, finding our own.
In the past year, however, she had taken up regular walking, occasional jogging, and hip-hop and belly dancing classes. She had also been working longer hours, and was perhaps experiencing more stress than the year before. Whatever the reason, dropping ten pounds meant something different for her than many people - she was now nearly 100 pounds. And, according to where her weight and height fit in a standardized chart the doctor referred to, my friend was a disordered eater. The doctor's tone was was stern and accusing. "You have a problem," the doctor (a woman) said. "You need to get help."
My friend talks about this experience with a considerable sense of trauma. No matter her protests to the contrary, the doctor was certain she had "a problem." My friend did not know herself to have an eating disorder, as she has never starved herself or thrown up food she has consumed. She doesn't have any preoccupations about being fat, and has never asked me anything along the lines of "do I look big in this?" or "does my stomach bulge in this shirt?" But her statistics were speaking for her, and the doctor chose to believe those instead of her proclamations.
"What could I do?" she said to me when she relayed this story. "I fit the profile." She is white, middle class, and a young woman in her early 20s. These are the people we think of when we hear "eating disorder," and they are the people who are usually treated for such a disorder, even though eating disorders are not inherently white or middle-class issues. The doctor presumed she must have been in denial about her disorder. Likely she has been lied to before. I wonder, also, whether the doctor has leveled other wrongful accusations in the past...perhaps she feels as though she can't afford not to.
So my friend was assigned to a nutritionist, who prescribed larger portion sizes as the antidote to her weight loss. Within a few months, most of the weight had returned. Overall, she has been glad to have had the opportunity to see a nutritionist, something many of us would likely benefit from, but still feels pained by the experience with her doctor, to the point of not knowing if she will return to her practice. She was embarrassed about returning to a doctor who was certain she "needed help" and facing someone who was convinced that she had "a problem," but she was also wary of trusting of a doctor who did not listen or respect her self-narrative. Sometimes we need a doctor to doubt us, to read between the lines, in order to help us. But what happens when need a doctor to believe what we are saying is true? Or at least, for the sake of our dignity, treat us as if we are the experts of our own lives?
I share this because we cannot forget that to standardize something does not mean we have accounted for every possibility of the human experience. We are far more diverse and varied than any standardized system can accommodate. This is especially poignant considering the interpretations of "disordered eating." Authority intervention, as Hatse and Honey (2005) indicate, is often predicated on a subjective idea of what "normal" eating is. To be diagnosed as having an eating disorder is not always the same as actually having disordered eating, as my friend experienced firsthand.
In their study of anorexia, Hatse and Honey face the difficulty of setting a sampling frame given the standards of objectivity forced upon subjective opinions and experiences. They note that "diagnoses [of anorexia] were often inconsistent and changeable," and subject to revision at the doctors' will. "To brand a girl anorexic without consent was to deny her selfhood," Hatse and Honey write, but they were not able to accommodate for the "complex spectrum" of disordered eating experiences because of the institutional pressures of doctors and the ethics board.
As one ethics officer says, rather shockingly, "The girls are anorexic. The fact that some girls don't agree with their diagnosis doesn't mean they're not anorexic." Hatse and Honey later explain how ethic committees, like medical science, "grew out of a positivist tradition," where a "universal, rational subject" is presumed. To trust the diagnoses implicitly was to "privilege clinical diagnoses over girls' views," but was a necessary precondition for achieving access to doctors' patients under standardized ethical circumstances.
In defining their research population, Hatse and Honey face a paradox - once defined, they "erased the particular and individual differences among potential participants," thereby missing a core tenet of research ethics: "respect for persons." Although Hatse and Honey push for greater collaboration with both the ethics board and the doctors, they argue that a more collaborative approach should be possible and a greater eye for diversity should be accommodated by medical and ethical practices. Unlike many other researchers, Hatse and Honey do not view the ethics board as an impediment to their study, but a means of ensuring a necessary protection of their studied population. The problem is when the necessary steps to getting the ethics board's stamp of approval means sacrificing a more holistic, humane, and authentically ethical treatment of their participants.
As researchers, we must navigate bureaucratic and positivist standards when we know they will limit our ability to account for variable experiences. No doubt, such standards are forced to reconcile their failure to say much about anything when faced with outliers who are really a lot like everybody else, in that they are not at all like anyone else. Because when we set limits and standards and ranges, we constantly find that humanity leaks through the cracks. Our bodies simply cannot be contained. Our charge as researchers is not to recapture them and squish them back inside, but to witness, document, and account for their liberation, thereby, perhaps, finding our own.
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